1. Introduction to the Sourcebook: Tools for Institutional, Political and Social Analysis (TIPS) in PSIA

Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) refers to the analysis of the distributional impact of policy reforms¹  on the well-being or welfare of different stakeholder groups, with particular focus on the poor and vulnerable.

This Sourcebook is part of a growing and collaborative response by international agencies and national partners to encourage and provide more systematic poverty and social impact analysis, to build capacity in-country and to move the balance of PSIA experience away from donors. More specifically, it is designed to fill a perceived gap in guidance on institutional, political and social analysis and is intended to complement the guidance provided in the World Bank’s PSIA User’s Guide (World Bank, 2003a, (pdf file 664 kb)) (French, Spanish and Russian translations of this document available at the World Bank PSIA website, which advocates a multidisciplinary approach to PSIA and presents both economic and social tools and methods, along with the World Bank’s Economic Toolkit (Bourgignon and da Silva, 2003. The Sourcebook can also be used to complement the reform-by-reform notes on economic analysis in PSIA that have been produced by the World Bank .

In a generic sense the term “social analysis” encompasses what is described in the sourcebook as institutional, political and social analysis. These are three overlapping areas of analysis, derived from different disciplinary backgrounds, that focus on the rules and relations that underpin and influence reform outcomes:

• Institutional analysis looks at the “rules of the game” that people develop to govern group behavior and interaction in political, economic and social spheres of life. Institutional analysis is based on an understanding that these rules, whether formally constructed or informally embedded in cultural practice, mediate and distort, sometimes fundamentally, the expected impacts of policy reform.

• Political analysis looks at the structure of power relations and often-entrenched interests of different stakeholders that affect decision making and distributional outcomes. Political analysis is built on recognition that political interests underpin many areas of policy debate and economic reform, challenging assumptions about the “technical” nature of policy making.

• Social analysis looks at the social relationships that govern interaction at different organizational levels, including households, communities and social groups. Social analysis is built on an understanding of the role of social and cultural norms in governing relationships within and between groups of social actors, with implications for the degree of inclusion and empowerment of specific social groups.

This Sourcebook introduces tools for understanding the institutional, political and social dimensions of policy design and implementation that will impact on poverty and distributional equity. These tools are presented for use in PSIA but can be equally applied in policy analysis more broadly. The methods and approaches used in PSIA are not new, nor is the focus on addressing distributional issues of interventions. The first impact analysis using the title “PSIA” was undertaken as a series of pilots by the World Bank and DFID during 2002. The uptake was relatively rapid. In three years, over 125 PSIAs have been initiated in more than 60 countries.

The Sourcebook is intended primarily for practitioners undertaking PSIA in developing countries.The Sourcebook does not seek to prescribe to this audience but provides illustrative guidance on a range of tools and their application. Tools from a range of disciplines are useful for PSIA, particularly if they utilise robust data backed up by good quality analysis and contextual understanding. PSIA provides an opportunity for powerful use of mixed methods, as illustrated by case study material presented in this Sourcebook.

This Sourcebook is organised into two volumes. Volume 1 provides an overview of the elements that make up institutional, political and social analysis for PSIA, introducing frameworks and tools using illustrations and case study material. Volume 2 provides more detailed guidance and illustration of the use of specific tools or on specific areas of good practice. This CD-ROM version of the Sourcebook integrates the Annexes with the main Sourcebook through the use of hyperlinks and provides additional links to related publications cited in the text. Click on the following links for pdf versions of the two volumes: Volume 1(pdf 616kb)  Volume 2(pdf 8.8mb)

Volume 1 is organised as follows. Part 2 introduces PSIA and its main objectives and briefly reviews the ten elements of good practice introduced in the World Bank User’s Guide to PSIA (World Bank, 2003a). The remainder of the Sourcebook is guided by these elements and presents technical guidance at three levels of analysis, as illustrated in Figure 1.1. Part 3 introduces tools for “macro”-level analysis of the country and reform context, Part 4 describes tools for analysing the “meso”-level processes of policy implementation and Part 5 introduces tools for analysing the meso- and “micro”-level impact of policy reform. Part 6 shows how this analysis can be used to assess the risk to policy reform. Part 7 briefly concludes.

 ¹ Although PSIA has focussed on policies, the approach and tools documented here can be applied equally well to the appraisal of plans, programmes and mega projects.